What Could Not Possibly Matter
by Moriquende
Summary: An account of Nymphadora Tonks from her first Defence class, through her training as an Auror, and up until her final lesson in the fine art of conjuring a Patronus...given, naturally, by one Remus J. Lupin. Not excessively romantic or overly angsty!
1. Chapter 1

A/N: For those of you who put me on alert for "Now, Let's Not Be Hasty", I'm sorry. No crackfic here. No Figwit, even. But try it anyway.

This story is intended as a birthday present for my dear friend Michelle, who ships Remus/Tonks with a vigour I find rather disturbing. I am a Remus/Sirius shipper, myself, but I confess that I have learned how much fun Remus and Tonks are to write for. And exploring Patronus and Animagus issues has been quite interesting as well.

Erm, so I don't own these characters and all the rest of it. No harm, no money, no foul.

—

Nymphadora Tonks was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a bad student in Defence Against the Dark Arts. On the contrary, it was one of the only things that came to her easily. During her first year, she watched her classmates struggle to Disarm one another, which they rarely accomplished before losing a considerate amount of sweat (and, occasionally, some of the proverbial blood and tears as well). _Expelliarmus _seemed to have a place already marked out for it in Tonks' mind, the same mind that was so stubborn when it came to Transfiguring matches into needles, or Charming objects to scuttle across the table away from her.

Tonks tried all these things, and tried them again, and tried them to the point to where she became better at them than many of her classmates who were much more talented, yet far less driven to get them right. But acquiring the knowledge was like shoving square pegs into round holes—possible but painful—and so Tonks was not accustomed to being the star student in any class. She still remembers the first time she Disarmed her classroom partner successfully, immediately, before anyone else in her year had been able to manage it. She looked down at Bill Weasley's wand in her hand, and suddenly she knew the feeling of falling and flying at the same time.

It was the same feeling she had when marks were posted at the end of every year. By her second year, she had her own ritual for the order in which she would look at them. Transfiguration first, always; it was invariably her worst mark, and she thought it best to get that one out of the way. She knew that her lack of attention to detail exasperated Professor McGonagall to no end, but she simply could not help it: for Tonks, it was such an easy task to change her _own _matter that she could not imagine why other objects and materials did not yield so easily to her will, and balked at the prospect of pressuring them further. She moved from there to Potions, then to Astronomy, and then to Charms and Herbology. She barely bothered to look at her mark in History of Magic, though she always managed to do reasonably well. Finally she glanced, almost casually, as though it was not important, at the Defence marks. Every year (it became a joke by her third year, and talk of her future as an Auror had already started by her fourth) the name _Nymphadora Tonks _topped the list. Every year, after gazing at the list, Tonks felt, somehow, that the other marks could not possibly matter.

—

It was not until her sixth year that Tonks' Defence mark dropped her from the top of the list to seventh place. No one was doing terribly well with the new spells they had been given to master for N.E.W.T. level, but Tonks had managed to keep her head more or less above water until the last lesson of the term.

_Expecto patronum._

It was fine the first time. They all said it together (with _feeling, _Professor Tofty insisted), but not a single wand tip in the room had even the faintest wisp of silver forthcoming, though Tonks caught a few of the students glancing at her, as if sure she would manage to achieve it on the first try.

_Expecto patronum!_

Like most of the N.E.W.T. level spells, it was difficult to practise—doing so in a safe classroom was ridiculously unrealistic, yet facing an actual dementor with the spell would have been downright dangerous. But they kept on with it, day after day for two, three, four weeks at a time. By the second week, four students had achieved a corporeal Patronus, and Tonks was not among them. By the third week, nearly half the class had managed it, while Tonks' wand was still sputtering silver vapour.

"If you don't mind my asking, Nymphadora," Professor Tofty inquired once (Tonks shuddered), "what memory have you chosen?"

"Loads of memories," Tonks said, which was true; she had difficulty focusing on any one memory for a significant amount of time. She found that memories changed when you concentrated on them too hard, much like the length of her hair or the shape of her nose. She would think of a particularly hilarious night spent laughing with a few of her friends in Ravenclaw, but as she focused on the memory harder, she would recall the fight she had had with one of them the morning after, or the way the Potions essay that had been due the next week had distracted her. Sometimes she would recall an especially good prank she had played, but the memory of the punishment that had followed tended to dull the excitement and happiness she felt at the recollection. And the only thought that made her consistently happy—the pleasure of her achievement in Defence—was rapidly becoming tainted by her inability to maintain that success.

The worst part was that everyone had a suggestion.

_Think of the time we played darts with that portrait of Grandma Black._

_Think of the year that Ravenclaw won the Quidditch Cup and the House Cup, one after the other._

_Think of the night you met Stubby Boardman in the Leaky Cauldron, and he bought you a glass of firewhisky after you Metamorphed into his lead guitarist._

_Think of the noise Snape made when you put frogspawn under his desk and he fell smack on his arse._

_Think of the last boy you snogged in the Forbidden Forest._

Tonks was not fond of this last helpful hint. Unlike the others, it failed to bring even the slightest smile to her face. Tonks was not in the habit of snogging, either in the Forbidden Forest or anywhere else. And although she knew that many of her friends were using their snogging partners of the moment as Patronus inspirations (it had backfired in some cases—Alicia Prewett's eagle-shaped Patronus had failed to make an appearance since she had broken up with Rupert Bones), she was not able to follow suit.

"Plenty of boys are interested, Nymphadora," her mother, Andromeda, lectured her every summer holiday.

"So long as I Metamorph into the girl they _actually _fancy, you mean," Tonks retorted, who had never been asked out when not pretending to be someone else. In truth, she was not too concerned about finding true love before her seventh year was out. Prospective Aurors rarely settled down before finishing their training. But in Defence classes, Tonks had taken to examining her classmates' expressions right before they recited the spell (_expecto _bloody _patronum, _she muttered under her breath). She knew, without admitting it even to herself, that none of her happy memories could inspire in her the same level of bliss she saw on their faces.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: I still don't own these characters, which is too bad. I bet Andromeda would be a load to have around.

—

Tonks was nearly twenty-one when she received the letter from the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. It was delayed three weeks past its promised arrival date, and unlike those of her classmates, the offer of a position as an Auror was conditional—"pending further inquiry into one or more of the necessary skill sets listed on the enclosed evaluation".

"_Bollocks," _Tonks shouted, crumpling the letter into a ball and pitching it in the general direction of the fireplace.

"_Accio Letter," _Andromeda murmured, raising her wand but not her gaze. The wad of paper changed direction abruptly, just before the flames consumed it, and Andromeda began to lay the piece of paper as flat as possible, fixing Tonks with a reproachful look. "It's an _offer,_" she insisted.

"A _conditional _offer," Tonks roared, taking careful aim with the evaluation sheet as well. "I did _not _waste the night of my last Yule Ball at Hogwarts studying bloody _Potions _for _this._" This was a little white lie, as Tonks had actually spent that particular evening mastering, at long last, the Patronus charm. The only curious thing about the spell, for her, was that her Patronus never appeared the same. On some occasions it was a bold lion; on others it was a marten, an owl, a housecat, and even, once, a rooster. She rarely saw the same form more than once, and never twice in succession. Her N.E.W.T. examiners had been baffled by it, had called her an anomaly, but concluded at last that as long as she was consistently able to produce a corporeal Patronus, the inconsistency of the Patronus' shape should not affect her mark.

"A _conditional _offer, darling," Andromeda said, managing to Summon Tonks' evaluation sheet before it sailed into the fireplace as well. "Which means that you read what they have to say, you comply with the conditions, and you accept your offer."

"What _conditions?_" Tonks shouted, watching her mother read through her evaluation. "I was _brilliant, _Mum—even Scrimgeour said so, and he doesn't like _anybody_—what am I supposed to do now, anyway? What do Auror rejects do for a living, get demoted to second-class Hit Wizards?"

Andromeda wasn't listening. She scanned her daughter's final evaluation, which was, to be fair, remarkable in most respects. Particularly high marks in Concealment and Disguise, which was no surprise; a slightly lower ranking in Stealth and Tracking, of course, due to Tonks' clumsy nature—but near the bottom of the list, Andromeda came across a category that had no mark next to it at all: Defence Against Dark Creatures. Instead, the Department had written: _Evidence not sufficient for evaluation._

"Nymphadora, did you take every _part _of the examination?"

"What?"

"See, here—it says…"

Tonks scanned the evaluation briefly, slowing down when she saw what Andromeda had seen. "Evidence not sufficient? That's ridiculous. We had a whole obstacle course—I remember, we started with easy things, grindylows and that, and finished with a sphinx, three dementors, and dragons."

"_Dragons?"_

"Baby dragons, they weren't much—more confused than anything—but that's not the _point, _Mum. I did it _all. _I did it better than _anyone._"

After surreptitiously putting the fire out with her wand hand, Andromeda extended the letter to Tonks with her left. "Well, you can speak to Mr. Scrimgeour in his office Tuesday next, according to this. I'm sure it's a mistake."

"Bloody _better._"

"Yes, dear."

—

"Tonks," Rufus Scrimgeour barked when his assistant showed her in, pulling her file from a drawer beneath his desk. "Nymphadora."

"Yes, sir."

"You'll be joining us this year, is that right?"

Tonks relaxed visibly. It was all right, then, whatever she had left out or forgotten on the obstacle course. They would probably just make her go back and do it again, and she could do that easily. "I'd like that, sir. Very much."

"Good." He pulled a more detailed evaluation out of her file, and Tonks tried to restrain herself from squinting at the comments her instructors had scribbled across the form. "They tell me you've finally got your self-awareness under control, that's excellent; solid on your antidotes; good background in Charms, and of course your natural advantage…" He glanced up at her. Under his scrutiny, Tonks felt her nose lengthen and widen slightly. She blushed, but Scrimgeour didn't crack a smile.

"We're concerned, Tonks," he said instead.

"About—"

"Your Patronus. Yes."

Tonks blinked. Scrimgeour said it as though he had expected her to _know _what was wrong, but why? Her Patronus problems hadn't plagued her since sixth year. "But I defeated all three dementors," she said, trying to keep her voice under control. "I only said the spell once, every time."

"Yes. You confronted the first one with a swan-shaped Patronus, and it changed down almost instantaneously," Scrimgeour said, flipping through Tonks' file almost casually. "You solved the sphinx's riddle in twenty-two seconds, faster than everyone else in the course, with the exception of Amos Pringle—who is, after all, an accomplished Legilimens—and then you attacked the second dementor with a Patronus in the form of a cougar. Sound right?"

Tonks nodded, still confused. "And then the boggart, which—"

"—turned into you." Scrimgeour took off his glasses and tossed them on the desk, peering at Tonks intently, who reddened more deeply. "In your, er, natural state. Is that correct?"

"Yes," Tonks whispered, staring at her feet.

"Yes. We've only had three other Metamorphmagi on staff in the history of the Department," Scrimgeour said briskly, as though tears were not forming in Tonks' eyes (which, today, were purple). "It's very rare, I'm sure you know, but it may interest you to learn that the same thing happened to them when they faced their own boggarts."

Tonks looked up suddenly, wiping her eyes with a touch of impatience when she saw that Scrimgeour had become blurry. "It did?"

"I don't claim to understand it, but some of the scholarship that's been done on Metamorphmagi would suggest that they usually only assume the appearance they were born with when they're—"

"Sleeping, depressed, or terrified," Tonks recited wearily; she did not need to read a book on Metamorphmagi to know that. "So I've heard."

Even Scrimgeour had the grace to look slightly embarrassed. "Yes, of course. So the theory is that the boggarts of Metamorphmagi change into themselves—the selves they never see unless something is terribly wrong."

"But I defeated the boggart," Tonks insisted.

"Yes. You have to understand, though, that many wizards see themselves when they face boggarts. Usually, those wizards are disqualified from becoming Aurors because it implies a weakness of character—a fear of the self, a sign of insecurity, as it were. Of course, we have made exceptions for Metamorphmagi in light of the recent research."

"What did you do for them before the recent research?" Tonks muttered under her breath.

"After your encounter with the boggart," Scrimgeour continued, as though he had not heard (though Tonks was fairly sure he had), "you defeated the last dementor with a Patronus in the shape of a doe. Agreed?"

"Agreed," Tonks echoed. "So what—"

"Has your Patronus ever settled on a form?"

Tonks shook her head. "But I've always been able to do it. I thought that was all that mattered."

"The appearance of your boggart," Scrimgeour informed her, "combined with your highly irregular Patronus, has caused certain of the evaluators to feel that your confidence in your own abilities may be a liability to you under pressure."

Tonks scowled. _In English, please._

"They recommend another year of training."

"Another YEAR?"

"But," Scrimgeour continued, motioning her back into her seat, "I have the power to overrule their decision if I see fit. Tonks, this doesn't go beyond this office, but we both know the Ministry is going to be in dire need of highly qualified Aurors shortly. Don't we?"

She couldn't believe he had said it. Most people in the Ministry were beginning to think about Voldemort more and more—particularly with the recent death of Bartemius Crouch—but no one she knew had dared to say it out loud, least of all the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement himself. Cornelius Fudge would have had a coronary if he'd heard, she knew. And suddenly the gravity of the path she had chosen for herself hit her for the first time, knowing, as she met Scrimgeour's unblinking gaze, that her duties would not be confined to rooting the last of the former Death Eaters out of their hiding places, as the Aurors had been doing for the past thirteen years.

"Yes," she heard herself say. "Yes. I—yes."

"We understand each other."

"Yes, sir."

Scrimgeour waved his wand, and suddenly Tonks' file folder changed from the sickly yellow that designated the files of trainees to the deep blue that the Department used for qualified Aurors. "Official ceremony this Friday," he said. "Dress robes. Bring your wand. And for Merlin's sake get rid of that pink hair, it's not at all professional. Rita Skeeter plans to be there, so if I were you I'd change into someone of no consequence immediately after. I certainly wish I could."

Tonks restrained herself from jumping up and down with great effort, grinning madly as she pumped Scrimgeour's hand. "Yes, sir. Of course. Yes."


	3. Chapter 3

A/N: How exactly _does _the snout of a werewolf differ from that of a true wolf? Professor Snape never lets Hermione explain, so we'll never know. Pity.

Oh yeah, and the characters: don't belong to me. At all. Don't own them. Not a whit. In conclusion: not mine.

—

_Think of the time you watched Sirius slip Cockroach Cluster into your Mum's tea. _Tonks gritted her teeth and squeezed herself still more tightly between the phone booth that marked the visitors' entrance to the Ministry and the cold brick wall of the alley. _Think of the wonderful things you heard Scrimgeour saying about you when he thought you weren't listening. _Mad-Eye had seen them coming before the rest of them had, and they had decided to wait out the attack instead of Disapparating; dementors in the Department of Mysteries would be interesting, to say the least. _Think of the way you feel around the dinner table at the Burrow. Think of the thrill you got the first time you ever held your wand. Think of how Remus and Sirius…think of how Remus…think of Remus._

Tonks rolled her eyes at herself. _Bloody Remus._

_That's not a memory. That won't work. _And it wouldn't. She had tried it privately already, and she hadn't even gotten silver vapour. The fact that Remus Lupin was the cause of a disproportionate amount of her happiness these days didn't seem to compensate for the fact that she had no real happy _memories_ of him—or, more appropriately, of _them_. There _was _no them, she admitted ruefully to herself. They had never spent so much as a moment alone together, without Mad-Eye's gloomy predictions, Sirius' antics, and Snape's disapproving presence. _And he's a distraction right now, _she insisted. _A distraction. Focus. They're coming. Focus. _She closed her eyes.

And then she felt, rather than saw, Lupin move into position in front of her, and her knees went rather weaker than she liked them under pressure. _Oh, hell._

"There," Mad-Eye hissed. "Wands out."

The three of them pulled out their wands as one. There were five dementors at the end of the alley, two more than Mad-Eye had been able to see from around the corner. Lupin's profile appeared calm, but Tonks could hear his breathing quicken. She felt her own heart speed up as well; whether for him or for them, she wasn't sure.

She was the first to move. She usually was. When they sensed her, the two in front moved forward, and the three behind followed suit. Neither Mad-Eye nor Lupin emerged; the plan had been to corner the dementors before using the Patronus. This plan, Tonks noted with the familiar feeling of alarm rising in her stomach, had seemed significantly wiser in the well-lit Ministry than it appeared right now.

"Go, Tonks," Lupin murmured.

_Think of the time you did this and think of the time you saw that and go, Tonks, and think of Remus. "Expecto patronum." _Her voice sounded weak even to her. Silver vapour was her only reward.

"_Expecto patronum!" _Mad-Eye bellowed; his hyena-shaped Patronus erupted from the end of his wand and galloped toward the dementor behind the other four; it withdrew almost immediately. Tonks remembered the first time the whole Order had seen Mad-Eye's Patronus; they'd taken the piss out of him for the rest of the evening. _The nastiest, most vicious animal with a talent for holding grudges, _Sirius had slagged him. _Seems appropriate. _In spite of herself, Tonks smiled. _Think of the way Snape pretended he wasn't laughing, and think of the way Emmeline giggled until butterbeer came out of her nose, and think of the way Remus. And think of Remus._

_Remus._

"_Expecto patronum!"_

But there was nothing, and now Lupin could see, could watch her fail to come up with what she needed, could watch her snap under pressure—the way the Department had always feared she would. Tonks squeezed her eyes shut and tried not to hear Mad-Eye's panicked, shouted commands, tried not to let it bother her that Lupin wasn't defending himself because he was worried about her. She heard the rattling breath _and think of the way _and felt one cold finger touch her chin _and think of Remus _and tried again.

"_Expecto patronum!"_

It was Lupin's voice, not her own. The air grew warmer around her and she felt them leave and she felt herself fall to the ground. Just before she blacked out, she wondered, dimly (and hated herself for wondering it), if he would catch her.


	4. Chapter 4

A/N: Seriously, there's a word count limit? Who knew? Ai. Characters still not at all mine.

—

"It's nothing to be ashamed of."

"Easy for you to say."

She felt better when she was talking back to him. She felt more grounded, more herself. It was too hard to be nice. Whenever she tried, she grew quiet and started thinking too much and eventually shut down altogether.

"I'm serious," Lupin insisted. "Dementors wouldn't be considered so dangerous if the spell were an easy one to carry off. Plenty of fully qualified wizards struggle with it."

"Yes, and plenty of fully unqualified wizards don't," Tonks grumbled.

"Harry Potter is not plenty of wizards."

"Harry Potter is a bloody prodigy."

"In Defence, perhaps," Lupin conceded, refilling her glass of mead before she asked him to. "In most matters, he remains wholly human, let me assure you."

It had never occurred to her, Tonks mused, that she would have Mad-Eye Moody to thank for a private audience with Remus Lupin. But Mad-Eye had sworn up and down after the incident outside the Ministry that Tonks was to perfect her Patronus charm to his satisfaction before being allowed on another assignment for the Order. "That's not _fair,_" Tonks had wailed. "I've _done _it before. The Ministry's never complained."

Mad-Eye had given her his laugh, the one that sounded more like a cackle than anything. "Listen to her," he bellowed. "The Ministry? The _Ministry? _What has the Ministry asked of you lately?"

And, of course, he was right, as always. In spite of the rising number of unexplained disappearances, in spite of the dementors that had started to roam outside Ministry control, the list of Tonks' duties, as prescribed by the Ministry, was disturbingly short. "So what's the idea?" Tonks said, nudging Lupin's knee with her foot; she was beginning to relax. "If you can teach the Patronus to a third year, then maybe, just maybe, you can talk the lesson down to my level?"

She expected him to reassure her, but instead he played along, pretending to consider it. "Well, perhaps. Of course, you could always sign back up for Defence class at Hogwarts. The sixth years should be covering the Patronus charm by this point, I should think."

"If their Defence professor hasn't wiped his own memory by now, you mean?"

"Or been sacked for savaging students on the grounds during full moon, yes. Quite."

She couldn't believe he was joking about that, but his laugh didn't seem forced and so she laughed with him. She enjoyed the way he looked younger when he was smiling—not just younger, but less weary somehow, as though whatever weight he had been carrying had grown somewhat lighter with his laughter.

"Nymphadora—"

"Tonks."

"Tonks, then," Lupin said reluctantly. "Is this your first problem with the Patronus?"

"I passed my N.E.W.T., didn't I?"

"That's not what I asked."

Tonks nodded gloomily. "It was my weakest area," she confessed. "I didn't manage to do it until seventh year, and I couldn't even do it regularly then. Not right until the very end of the year. And then—even then, it was never the same."

"The form, you mean."

"Yes."

"It's not as rare as you might think," Lupin said mildly. "When I was at Hogwarts, they taught us the Patronus charm for O.W.L. level—they changed it, actually, when so few students managed it on the practical examination—but it usually took a while for those who _could _accomplish it to settle on a form. Some didn't have a standard form until N.E.W.T. level."

"So it's an immaturity thing," Tonks said. "Brilliant."

"No," Lupin said thoughtfully. "No, the Patronus has more to do with the people around you than it has to do with you. Teenagers, of course, change loyalties so frequently—friends, girlfriends and the like—it's not uncommon for their Patronuses to shift occasionally before they come of age, and sometimes even after that."

"I don't understand. I thought a Patronus reflected the person casting—"

Lupin shook his head. "You are thinking, I believe, of the Animagus, whose animal form often reflects his or her inner nature. The Patronus reflects something—or, often, someone—to whom we look for protection. Harry, though he has never known his father, associates him with the protection he offered him in his death. His Patronus became James' Animagus form—a stag—and will, I suspect, remain so.

"Sirius, now," Lupin said, a little too casually, and Tonks narrowed her eyes at him through her violet bangs; what was he on about? "Sirius is one of those rare wizards whose Animagus form is identical to his Patronus. The reason for this, of course—" Lupin gestured vaguely around the living room of twelve Grimmauld Place, which Tonks surveyed with distaste, unable to meet the eyes of the house-elves mounted on the wall. "Sirius had no protector within his family when he was growing up. His Patronus would hardly take the form of a parent, as Harry's did. When he was at school, I believe he felt responsible for protecting his friends, rather than being protected by them—for me, of course, because of my—condition—but also for Peter."

"So Sirius' Patronus was—" Tonks paused. "Are you saying that's what I'm like, too? That my Patronus is—"

"—you," Lupin finished. "Ever changing, ever shifting in appearance—"

"But I wasn't like Sirius. I wasn't—I mean, it's not the same thing." She thought about it for a little while, but could make no sense of it. "My mother—I had plenty of support—"

"I think," Lupin said quietly, examining his folded hands carefully, "that support and protection are not exactly the same thing."

She didn't know what to say to him when he said things like that.

"The point is not for you to know _why _your Patronus is what it is," Lupin said briskly. "The point is for you to understand that your Patronus is not weak in nature because of its shifting form. It is as strong as you are—"

"Some comfort, that," Tonks muttered.

Lupin pretended not to hear. "I blame the Department of Magical Law Enforcement for making you insecure about its form in the first place. I suspect you would have been better off without their interference."

He examined her intently for a moment, as he often did, and for the first time she didn't look away. She looked directly into his eyes—_golden brown, _she filed away for future reference—and held his gaze. It wasn't so terrible, after all. She couldn't even remember why she had been so afraid of doing it before. "The point," he said again, and stopped, as if he couldn't remember either.

"Yes?" Tonks said innocently. "The point?"

"The _point,_" Lupin said, returning to his brisk manner, "is for you to _practise _until you regain the confidence they took from you in training. And to practise further, and then to practise more, and still more—"

And she groaned inwardly as Lupin flicked his wand to move the furniture against the walls, preparing a clearing for her Patronus and already off on obscure points of Defence theory about which Tonks, at the moment, could not be bothered to know or care.


	5. Chapter 5

A/N: Isn't it terrible that the author who brought you "Treebeard Goes to Get the Hot Oil" can't come up with anything more creative than "Chapter 5"? I'm so sorry. Oh, and these characters are too busy hanging out with J.K. Rowling to belong to me. Prats.

—

"_Expecto patronum."_

"Nymphadora, I didn't even _believe_ that one—"

"_Tonks._"

"Appalling attempt, Tonks. Try again."

"_Expecto patronum!"_

"Better, that. I think we nearly got a—seagull, was it?"

"Harpy, maybe. It's been a harpy a few times."

"How appropriate—_ouch! _That was completely unnecessary—"

"_Expecto patronum!"_

—

And the next night as well. Tonks couldn't tell if Lupin actually enjoyed teaching her or if he was simply relieved to be free of his duties as spy for the moment, but she was determined not to improve too quickly.

"_Expecto pa—_"

"Bring forth your wand on the _second _syllable, Nymphadora—"

"TONKS!"

"on _exPECto, _you see, and step forward a bit as well."

"_ExPECto patronum—_"

"Yes, good step, but you forgot the wand—"

"You're mixing me up!"

"I _am _sorry."

"You should be; I was working on a brilliant leopard there."

"More impressive than the oyster you came out with last night?"

"Give me a break. I was exhausted after your interminable Immerse The Self in Happy Thoughts nonsense."

"It's been proven that cynical wizards and witches have a harder time producing a strong Patr—"

"Yes, yes, I'll believe that when I see Severus Snape collapse in front of a dementor, thanks very much."

"Again, please."

"_ExPECto patronum!"_

"Oh, brilliant! Very nice!"

—

She got better, of course. She couldn't help it; his desire to see her improve was apparently stronger than her desire to drag out the lessons for as long as possible. And she admitted that it would be nice when Dumbledore allowed her back out on patrol, as the bloody Department of Magical bloody Law Enforcement had offered absolutely nothing of interest lately. Tonks came back to Order headquarters complaining of boredom on a regular basis, only to be met with Snape's sneer, Molly's tut-tutting, and Moody's helpful remarks, which were usually along the lines of "Prove you can handle it, and we'll give you something interesting to do." And so Tonks' last night of Patronus lessons with Lupin was barely two weeks after the first.

"Five times in succession, Nym—"

"Remus, I'm warning you—"

"Tonks, then."

"_Five?"_

"You did five last night."

"Yes, but I wasn't thinking about it then."

"Five times in succession, and you need never hear my happy thoughts speech again. Tempting?"

"Extremely."

"Go on."

And she did. And it was lovely and all the rest of it, and on the second and the third try she even produced the same Patronus (the leopard again), and the harpy didn't come out once. And they laughed and celebrated when she'd done it five times in a row, and Lupin conjured glasses of mead out of thin air and Tonks jumped up and down, and before she had time to think about it she had found her way into his arms. He blinked in surprise, but she didn't feel him pulling away.

She settled her head against his shoulder and willed herself not to move.

"N—Tonks—"

"Don't."

"—"

"Whatever it is you're going to say. Just—don't."

He didn't, and so she kissed him.

It was not, Tonks reflected later, exactly what she had expected. It wasn't as though it was her first time snogging anyone (though the others had all been rather forgettable) and it certainly wasn't as though she hadn't expected it to be absolutely amazing (she had; it was). But it was more than him, it was _bigger _than him, somehow—it was Nymphadora Tonks reaching down into a rather small store of courage and reason and coming out with something _right _to do. It was, she conceded, rather similar to the feeling of falling and flying at the same time.

"Tonks," he murmured against her forehead, at length.

"You know," she said quietly. "You can call me by my—my real name. I—I actually don't mind so much. When you do."

He shook his head. "Tonks," he said, too softly. "I think you should go."

She had known, before she kissed him, that he would say that, when they had finished. It mattered terribly, and yet it didn't matter at all. She would do it again, she knew; she wouldn't take it back.

And she wouldn't make him ask her twice, either. She picked up her glass of mead from the side table (though she could probably have done with both glasses, she thought ruefully) and headed toward the door. She looked back at him before she left. He hadn't moved.

She would wonder, later, what had made her do it. She did not flourish her wand, and she did not step forward on the second syllable.

"_Expecto patronum."_

Out of the end of Tonks' wand erupted an immense silver wolf. It trotted forward a few paces before turning to look at Tonks curiously, head cocked slightly to one side. Tonks looked at Lupin, watched Lupin see the wolf—watched his eyes focus on the slightly odd shape of the snout and the tufted tail.

She lowered her wand after a moment. A million remarks flew through her head—some amusing, some caustic—some simply matter-of-fact—and all of them, she decided as she left, completely unnecessary.


	6. Chapter 6

A/N: So I called a meeting of the Order of the Phoenix and I said, "Characters, would you like to belong to me?" and they said, "NO!" with a Resounding Voice. So they don't. I nearly got Kingsley Shacklebolt, though. Damn.

—

They did not speak until they found themselves, somehow, on guard duty together. Moody had decided, after what had happened to Arthur Weasley, that two would be necessary to monitor the Department of Mysteries from that point on—"one to watch, and one to keep the other awake," he growled with a rather accusatory look in Arthur's direction; Arthur looked away sheepishly. One day, Tonks would hope against hope for guard duty with Lupin, and the next she would pray that it would never happen. Lupin, after all, had been sent back to the werewolves as a spy. She saw him only once a month, and that was and wasn't exactly what she wanted.

When it finally happened, she was not prepared. Bill Weasley, her usual partner on duty, had fallen ill, and Lupin was asked to fill in. "I don't _need _a partner!" Tonks wailed at headquarters, thrilled and mortified at the same time. "Seriously, Mad-Eye, nothing's happened since Arthur—I _know _how to stay awake, honestly—"

"Not after what happened outside the Ministry," Moody mumbled from behind his _Evening Prophet._

"What was all that _training _for, then?" Tonks demanded of Moody, though she was looking at Lupin. "So that I could have my hand held through every oper—"

"This is hardly _every _operation," Moody barked. "This is _this _operation. _This _guard duty. _This _night."

And Tonks, accustomed to following barked orders from years of service to Scrimgeour, gave in. It helped that part of her was more than happy to do so. Lupin's expression was characteristically inscrutable, and she didn't expect anything more from him than vague reports of his mission and friendly, yet impersonal inquiries into how she had been. "How have you been, Tonks?" he would ask her often, always taking care not to use Nymphadora. She would put up with being called Nymphadora from the whole world, if only it meant that he would call her Nymphadora again. And then, maybe she wouldn't. Maybe part of the name's renewed charm, for her, was that he was the only one who had used it in such a long time.

—

"I had almost hoped," Tonks whispered, after the necessary how-have-you-beens were out of the way, "for something to happen tonight. You know. Anything. Just so I could prove—"

"That's a very unwise wish," Lupin said, almost primly.

Tonks sighed. "You're still no fun at all."

He laughed louder than he should have, under the circumstances. "Ever the killjoy."

"_You _know what I—"

"I know what you meant. All right, fair enough. I do." He lowered his voice even further. "Imagine, then—all is silent. The Ministry is asleep. Two lone figures wait, at the end of the long hallway—ready, alert, when suddenly, at the other end of the corridor, they see—a _dementor._"

The threat in Lupin's voice made Tonks shiver with delight. She hadn't thought, after everything she'd seen and been through, that it would ever be fun to be frightened again. But perhaps it could be, when the fright wasn't real, and when you weren't alone. And when you knew that, whatever it was, there was a pretty good chance you were up to its level.

"It glides closer," Lupin whispered. "They hear it sucking on the still night air—"

"We're inside, Remus. And underground."

"—on the remarkably stuffy basement air, then—and as it draws ever nearer—one partner looks to the other and _realises _that he is terrified. Paralysed. With fear. And terror."

"You think you're overdoing it much?"

Lupin glared at her. "Are you going to leap into action or not?"

"Yes! Right." Tonks stood hastily, wand in hand.

"And as the dementor draws closer, she jumps to her feet and summons the happiest thought she possesses, without any trace of cynicism to speak of—"

Immediately, though she didn't want it to, a memory of celebration, and mead, and Lupin's breath against her cheek floated into Tonks' mind. She didn't fight it off anymore, though. She knew it strengthened her Patronus; the memory was, perhaps, her happiest, in spite of the fact that it didn't end as she wanted it to. She tried very hard not to crumble under the pressure, trapped between the Remus she remembered and the Remus who was, still, instructing her very enthusiastically from his place on the floor.

"And she steps _forward_—"

"—on the second syllable—"

"—when she says—"

"_ExPECto patronum!"_

There it was again. It ceased to surprise her, now. She had, after all, experienced twenty-four steady years of being her own protector, and she had nothing against the idea of someone else coming in to take her place. The wolf was just as well defined as it had been on the first night she conjured it: sharp eyes, tufted tail, a snout that Tonks liked to think reflected the slight angle of Lupin's own nose.

And as she turned, again, to watch Lupin look at it—almost casually, as though it was not important—she noticed that he was smiling, very faintly, in the way he did when someone had done something that pleased him.

She knew, as she settled back down on the floor next to him and felt his arm come to rest gently around her shoulders, that he would not allow himself to hold her the next day, or the day after that. She knew that he could do this for the same reason she could: because it was a place out of time, out of routine, where the usual rules (the ones that kept him from speaking to her when no one else was around) did not apply. She knew that it would be a long time—longer, perhaps, than she was prepared to wait—before he would be able to admit to himself, let alone to her, that he loved her.

But Tonks watched the wolf vanish into the darkness of the marble corridor, and felt, somehow, that all these other things could not possibly matter.

_Fin._


End file.
